Writings Edith Wharton | Video | C-SPAN.org Supreme Court July 30, 2001 Writings of Edith Wharton Guests examined the history of the Gilded Age through the writings of Edith Wharton, author of The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country and Ethan Frome. Wharton wrote The… read more Writings of Edith Wharton Guests examined the history of the Gilded Age through the writings of Edith Wharton, author of The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country and Ethan Frome. Wharton wrote The Age of Innocence in 1920, with the story taking place in the late 1800s in “Old New York.” Among the topics addressed were the U.S. during the turn of the century, life among “elite” society, how “old money families” of New York dealt with the “newly rich,” and America’s growing role internationally. The program was telecast from Mrs. Wharton’s home, The Mount, which she designed and built in Massachusetts and which featured several items relating to her life and career.

close Transcript type Edith Wharton - Biography and Works. Search Texts, Read Online. Discuss. Edith Wharton Biography of Edith Wharton Edith Wharton (1862-1937), American author, wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Age of Innocence (1920); Newland reddened. ï¿½Living together? Well, why not? Who had the right to make her life over if she hadnï¿½t? I'm sick of the hypocrisy that would bury alive a woman of her age if her husband prefers to live with harlots.ï¿½ He stopped and turned away angrily to light his cigar. ï¿½Women ought to be freeï¿½as free as we are,ï¿½ he declared, making a discovery of which he was too irritated to measure the terrific consequences.-Ch. 5 Set in 1870's New York City, Wharton examines upper-class values and morals in all their conventionality and tradition, rigidity and hypocrisy, at times with her subtle irony and wit.

As Newland Archer is living the life of the just and doing all the right things to establish his respectability in society, his naï¿½vetï¿½ comes to the fore when his affections are torn between two women. Edith Wharton herself broke out of the conventional mores of her time to become the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. She is the source of many such witticisms and concise observations on human nature as ï¿½ï¿½.the only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.ï¿½ (House of Mirth, Bk. 1, Ch. 5); ï¿½Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet alone.ï¿½ (ï¿½Xinguï¿½, 1917); and ï¿½When people ask for time, itï¿½s always for time to say no. Yes has one more letter in it, but it doesnï¿½t take half as long to say.ï¿½ (The Children pub. 1928).

Wharton had a great love of architecture, gardens and design and wrote numerous articles and essays on the subjects including Italian Villas and Their Gardens (1904). As the author of numerous best-selling award-winning works including novels, short stories, and travel essays she has inspired many other authors. Some of her works have been adapted to the stage and film and many are still in print today. Edith Newbold Jones was born into the wealthy family of George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Rhinelander on 24 January 1862 in New York City. She had two brothers, Frederic and Henry ï¿½Harryï¿½ Edward. To escape the bustling city, the family spent summers at ï¿½Pencraigï¿½ on the shores of Newport Harbour in Newport, Rhode Island. When Edith was four years old they moved to Europe, spending the next five years traveling throughout Italy, Spain, Germany and France. Back in New York young Edith continued her education under private tutors. She learned French and German and a voracious reader, she studied literature, philosophy, science, and art which would also become a favourite subject of hers. She also started to write short stories and poetry.

Fast and Loose was published in 1877 and Verses a collection of poems privately published in 1878. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the editor of Atlantic Monthly William Dean Howells are said to have read and been impressed by these early works. After Edith made her debut into society in 1879, the Jones family again traveled to Europeï¿½George Jones was ill and was to take a rest cure in Cannes on the French Riviera. It was to no avail however and he died there on 15 March 1882. While in Bar Harbor, Maine the next year Edith met Walter Berry who would become a lifetime friend. On 29 April 1885 Edith married banker Edward ï¿½Teddyï¿½ Robbins Wharton in Trinity Chapel, New York. They honeymooned in Europe and for the next few years traveled extensively together although the union would prove to be unhappy. Living in New York on Park Avenue near Central Park, Wharton had her first poems published in Scribnerï¿½s Magazine. In 1891 they also printed the first of many of her short stories ï¿½Mrs.

Mansteyï¿½s Viewï¿½. For the next forty years or so they, along with other publications including Atlantic Monthly, Century Magazine, Harperï¿½s, Lippincottï¿½s and the Saturday Evening Post would publish her stories. When Edith purchased ï¿½Landï¿½s Endï¿½ in Newport she actively became involved in its remodeling and redesigning. She also co-authored The Decoration of Houses (1897) with architect Ogden Codman. Her next publication was a collection of short stories, The Greater Inclination (1899). Others include Crucial Instances (1901), The Descent of Man and Other Stories (1904), The Hermit and the Wild Woman (1908), Xingu and Other Stories (1917), and The World Over (1936). She also wrote ghost stories collected in Tales of Men and Ghosts (1910), Here and Beyond (1926), and Ghosts (1937), many previously appearing in magazines.

After Edithï¿½s mother Lucretia died in 1901 she began the designing of and oversaw the construction of her new home ï¿½The Mountï¿½ in Lenox, Massachusetts. A stunning example of a Palladin-style English country home, it overlooks Laurel Lake. Edithï¿½s niece Beatrix Ferrand, a landscape architect, helped design the extensive gardens and grass terraces on the property. It is now a National Historic Landmark. However busy she was with the planning and building of her home, Wharton continued to write. Her next novels were The Valley of Decision (1902) and Sanctuary (1903), published the same year she met Henry James , who would become a good friend and confidante. House of Mirth (1905) became that yearsï¿½ best-seller. Madame de Treymes (1907) was followed by The Fruit of the Tree (1907) which appeared the same year the Whartons moved from their Park Avenue home to 53 Rue de Varenne in Paris.

They soon bought a car and were motoring all over France, which prompted her collection of travel essays A Motor-Flight through France (1908). While in Paris, Wharton met journalist Morton Fullerton, who would become a close friend and was instrumental in getting some of her works published in France. They also had an affair that lasted three years. Teddy had a mistress and had been embezzling funds from Edith to support her. They were divorced in 1913. Edith had sold The Mount and permanently settled in Paris, but made trips to England to see Henry James and traveled with her friend and art critic Bernard Berenson. Her poetry collection Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verses was published in 1909, followed by her novel set in New England Ethan Frome (1911); Ethan knew the word for one of exceptional import. Almost everybody in the neighbourhood had ï¿½troubles,ï¿½ frankly localized and specified; but only the chosen had ï¿½complications.ï¿½ To have them was in itself a distinction, though it was also, in most cases, a death-warrant.

People struggled on for years with ï¿½troubles,ï¿½ but they almost always succumbed to ï¿½complications.ï¿½ Ethanï¿½s heart was jerking to and fro between two extremities of feeling, but for the moment compassion prevailed. His wife looked so hard and lonely, sitting there in the darkness with such thoughts.-Ch. 7 Familiar themes of Whartonï¿½s are seen in Ethan Frome including the conflict between societal mores and the pursuit of happiness. The Reef (1912) follows four Americans in France and is full of suspense and Whartonï¿½s masterful character developments. It was followed by another highly acclaimed work The Custom of the Country (1913) which satirically examines Americaï¿½s nouveau riche class in all their desperate and at times greedy ruthlessness. When World War I began Wharton was in North Africa, but soon devoted much of her time in assisting refugees and orphans in France and Belgium. She helped raise funds for their support, and was involved with creating and running hostels and schools for them. She aided women in self-sufficiency by finding them means of employment.

With her good friend Walter Berry she toured battlefields and hospitals and tended to the sick which resulted in her diary and essays in Fighting France (1915) and The Marne (1918). For her efforts she was awarded the title of Chevalier (Knight) in the French Legion of Honour in 1916. When Wharton learned of the death of her friend Henry James on 28 February 1916 she wrote ï¿½We who knew him well know how great he would have been if he had never written a line.ï¿½ The Bunner Sisters (1917) was published the same year as another of Whartonï¿½s classic contributions to womenï¿½s literature, Summer (1917). Also in 1917 she traveled to Morocco of which she wrote about in her collection of travel essays In Morocco (1920). In 1918 she moved to ï¿½Pavillon Colombeï¿½, located just outside of Paris in Saint-Brice-sous-Forï¿½t where she had an ï¿½awfulï¿½ visit from F.

Scott Fitzgerald in 1925. Her collection of essays French Ways and Their Meaning (1919) was followed by The Age of Innocence (1920). In 1921 Wharton sailed to America to receive the Pulitzer Prize for it. Her highly acclaimed The Glimpses of the Moon (1922) was followed by A Son At The Front (1923). That year, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Yale University. Further works include Old New York (1924), The Motherï¿½s Recompense (1925), The Writing of Fiction (essays, 1925), Twelve Poems (1926), Twilight Sleep (1927), The Children (1928), Hudson River Bracketed (1929) and itï¿½s sequel The Gods Arrive (1932), Certain People (1930), Human Nature (1933), and A Backward Glance (autobiography, 1934). In 1930 Wharton was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Edith Wharton died of a stroke on 11 August 1937 at Pavillon Colombe. Her funeral service was held at the American Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Paris of which her father was a founding member. She was buried on 14 August in the Cimetiï¿½re des Gonards, Versailles, France. The epitaph on the cross adorning her gravestone reads O Crux Ave Spes Unica which roughly translates to Hail O Cross Our Only Hope. Biography written by C. D. Merriman for Jalic Inc. Copyright Jalic Inc. 2007. All Rights Reserved. The above biography is copyrighted. Do not republish it without permission. Forum Discussions on Edith Wharton Recent Forum Posts on Edith Wharton Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton - Author Biography - LitLovers • Education: Educated privately in New York and Europe • Awards—Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence, 1921, French Legion of Honor, 1916 One of America's most important novelists, Edith Wharton was a refined, relentless chronicler of the Gilded Age and its social mores.

Along with close friend Henry James, she helped define literature at the turn of the 20th century, even as she wrote classic nonfiction on travel, decorating and her own life. More Edith Newbold Jones was born January 24, 1862, into such wealth and privilege that her family inspired the phrase "keeping up with the Joneses." The youngest of three children, Edith spent her early years touring Europe with her parents and, upon the family's return to the United States, enjoyed a privileged childhood in New York and Newport, Rhode Island. Edith's creativity and talent soon became obvious: By the age of eighteen she had written a novella, and (as well as witty reviews of it) and published poetry in the Atlantic Monthly. After a failed engagement, Edith married a wealthy sportsman, Edward Wharton. Despite similar backgrounds and a shared taste for travel, the marriage was not a success. Many of Wharton's novels chronicle unhappy marriages, in which the demands of love and vocation often conflict with the expectations of society. Wharton's first major novel, The House of Mirth, published in 1905, enjoyed considerable Literary Success.

Ethan Frome appeared six years later, solidifying Wharton's reputation as an important novelist. Often in the company of her close friend, Henry James, Wharton mingled with some of the most famous writers and artists of the day, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, André Gide, Sinclair Lewis, Jean Cocteau, and Jack London. In 1913 Edith divorced Edward. She lived mostly in France for the remainder of her life. When World War I broke out, she organized hostels for refugees, worked as a fund-raiser, and wrote for American publications from battlefield frontlines. She was awarded the French Legion of Honor for her courage and distinguished work. The Age of Innocence, a novel about New York in the 1870s, earned Wharton the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1921 — the first time the award had been bestowed upon a woman. Wharton traveled throughout Europe to encourage young authors. She also continued to write, lying in her bed every morning, as she had always done, dropping each newly penned page on the floor to be collected and arranged when she was finished. Wharton suffered a stroke and died on August 11, 1937.

She is buried in the American Cemetery in Versailles, France. Extras • Surprisingly, in addition to her career as a fiction writer, Wharton was also a well-known interior designer. Her book, The Decoration of Houses was widely read and is today considered the first modern manual of interior design. • Upon the publication of The House of Mirth in 1905, Wharton became an instant celebrity, and the the book was an instant bestseller, with 80,000 copies ordered from Scribner's six weeks after its release. • Wharton had a great fondness for dogs, and owned several throughout her life. (From Barnes and Noble.) Literary Corner Cafe: Book Review - The Classics - The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton Sunday, November 21, 2010 Book Review - The Classics - The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence is the book Edith Wharton wrote in honor of her great friend, Henry James.

Set in New York City's sumptuous “Golden Age” of the 1870s, The Age of Innocence is the story of Newland Archer, his fiancée, May Welland, and the rather mysterious Countess Ellen Olenska, a cousin of May's. It's also a story of the conventions of “Old New York” and how the customs and traditions of society are changing and what happens when the “new” world begins to encroach upon the “old.” Although its lovers are frustrated at every turn, The Age of Innocence is, without a doubt, Wharton's most romantic novel. The first half of the novel, especially, despite its heavy romanticism, contains much subtle humor, for even as Wharton contrasts, she parodies the society in which she, herself, grew up. The opening chapters are filled with subtle wit, and some of the secondary characters are more like caricatures, chiefly, Mrs. Manson Mingott: The immense accretion of flesh which had descended on her in middle life like a flood of lava on a doomed city had changed her from a plump active little woman with a neatly-turned foot and ankle into something as vast and august as a natural phenomenon.

Wharton masterfully begins setting up the contrast between “old” and “new” on the very first page when Newland Archer becomes peeved that Ellen Olenska is allowed to occupy the same box at the opera as May. May is, after all, a woman of impeccable reputation, while Ellen Olenska has committed the unpardonable error of leaving her husband, a Polish count, and running away with his secretary. Newland Archer is, of course, a man fixated with “taste” and “the proper thing to do.” The importance of “doing the proper thing” and of maintaining one's proper place in society is one of the main themes of this novel. Throughout the entire book, Wharton makes contrasts: the old brownstones are contrasted against the new, cream colored residences; Ellen's dark hair and vivid clothing is contrasted against May's fair complexion and blonde innocence; homes are judged “proper” or not by whether the drawing room is on the same floor as the main bedroom. The “Grande Dames” of society, principally Mrs. Mingott and Mrs.

Beaufort, are described as though they never age in order to confer some aspect of immortality on them because they always “do what's right.” The Age of Innocence is, however, far more than a book about what's proper and what's not. The characters, especially the three principals, Newland Archer, May Welland, and Ellen Olenska, are highly complex people. There really is very little in this book that is clear-cut, despite the wishes of its characters for life to be so. The arrival of Ellen Olenska triggers some deep soul searching in Newland Archer as he begins, for the first time, to question the very propriety of his engagement to May. As he does, we also learn that “innocence” is, perhaps, only a facade and that “high” society can be the most corrupt society of all. As Newland Archer becomes acutely aware of the many levels and stratifications in New York society, so do we, and Newland, with his checkered past, begins to wonder just where he, himself, properly fits in.

Against his wishes, Newland Archer finds himself falling in love with Ellen Olenska, and falling in love for, what Newland Archer considers, are all the wrong reasons. In a desperate attempt to protect both himself and May, Newland, in his capacity as a lawyer, encourages Ellen not to divorce her European husband and tries to rush his marriage to May. One of the most memorable scenes, and a turning point in the book, occurs when Newland Archer takes a walk down to the oceanfront and makes the decision to let fate, rather than his conscious actions decide the course of his life. Another important turning point, and one that shows us the novel's theme in dialogue, occurs when Newland says to Ellen: I want to get away with you into a world where words and categories don't exist, Where we shall be simply two human beings who love each other, who are the whole of life to each other, and nothing else on earth will matter. Ellen replies: Oh, my dear, where is that country? Have you ever been there?

I know so many who've tried to find it, and believe me, they all got out by mistake at wayside stations: at places like Boulogne, or Pisa, or Monte Carlo and it wasn't at all different from the old world they'd left, but only rather smaller and dingier and more promiscuous. Clearly, Ellen is the more realistic of the two, though Newland has also come to question the value of “romance” in his life. The Age of Innocence is exquisitely detailed with lavish descriptions of the homes, the meals, the clothes, the flowers, the customs. I think this book is rather unusual in that many of the scenes are written as tableaux, i.e., described in such vivid and precise detail one might almost think Wharton were describing a beautiful oil painting. Several of the scenes in which Newland sees Ellen are written in the manner of tableaux, and Martin Scorsese, in his gorgeous film adaptation, has actually utilized real oil paintings in the filming of some of the scenes.

The book, which won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, is told from the perspective of two people: Wharton, as she observes and satirizes the society in which she, herself, grew up, and Newland Archer, as he slowly comes to realize its foibles. If you’ve only read Ethan Frome, Wharton’s more popular book, you might be shocked at how different The Age of Innocence is, or you might feel Wharton simply recycled the plot of Ethan Frome into The Age of Innocence, and there are similarities. To begin with, both books revolve around men who fall in love with the cousin of their wife. But Ethan Frome was hen-pecked and far weaker than Newland Archer. He was a child-in-the-guise-of-an-adult, who falls in love with a child, and both of them inhabit a child’s world. And May is no Zeena. Newland Archer and Ellen Olenska, in contrast to Ethan Frome and Mattie Silver, are both adults. They are flawed adults, to be sure, but adults nonetheless.

While we can observe the story of Ethan, Zeena, and Mattie, we can truly identify with Newland, May, and Ellen. For that reason, I greatly prefer this novel. For me, The Age of Innocence is one of the most beautiful, most subtle, and saddest books I've ever read. While I won't tell you how it all works out, it really doesn't spoil anything to say that by the book's end, society and its many rules and conventions can't be blamed for anything at all. By the book's end, no one has anyone to blame for anything but himself. 5/5 Recommended: Yes. This is one of the great classics of American literature and showcases the death of “old” New York society and class distinction perfectly. Note: Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones in 1862 into a family so wealthy it actually inspired the phrase, “Keeping up with the Joneses.” She married an equally wealthy sportsman, Edward Wharton, but despite their similar background and shared passion for travel, the marriage simply didn't work. Henry James was Wharton's close friend, and the two of them were often in the company of F.

Scott Fitzgerald, Andre Gide, Sinclair Lewis, Jean Cocteau, and Jack London. After her divorce in 1913, Wharton moved to France where she was awarded the French Legion of Honor for her humanitarian efforts during the war. She wrote in bed every morning of her life. She died in 1937 and is buried in the American Cemetery at Versailles. Posted by Edith Wharton - The Mount | Edith Wharton's Home Edith Wharton Edith Wharton A Biography Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was born into a tightly controlled society at a time when women were discouraged from achieving anything beyond a proper marriage. Wharton broke through these strictures to become one of America’s greatest writers. Author of The Age of Innocence, Ethan Frome, and The House of Mirth, she wrote over 40 books in 40 years, including authoritative works on architecture, gardens, interior design, and travel. She was the first woman awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Yale University, and a full membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Childhood “No children of my own age…were as close to me as the great voices that spoke to me from books. Whenever I try to recall my childhood it is in my father’s library that it comes to life…” Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones into a wealthy New York family on January 24, 1862, at 14 West 23rd St. The third child and only daughter of George Frederic and Lucretia Rhinelander Jones, the young Edith spent much of her childhood in Europe, mainly France, Germany, Italy, developing both her gift for languages and a deep appreciation for beauty – in art, architecture and literature. Returning to New York in 1872, Edith’s literary life began: her parents engaged the talented Anna Catherine Bahlmann as her governess, she was allowed access to her father’s library, and at age 16, Verses, her volume of poems was published privately.

Society & Marriage “..he was thirteen years older than myself, but the difference in age was lessened by his natural youthfulness, his good humor and gaiety, and the fact that he shared my love of animals and out-door life, and was soon to catch my travel-fever…” At age 17, Edith Jones “came out” into society, making the rounds of dances and parties in Newport and New York, observing the rituals of her privileged world, a world she would later gleefully skewer in her fiction. Her childhood ended with the death of her father in March of 1882, followed by two romantic disappointments. Still unmarried at the age of 23, Edith was rapidly approaching “old maid” status. In 1885 she married Edward Robbins (Teddy) Wharton. Though imperfectly suited for each other, the couple filled their early married years with travel, houses, and dogs. While living in Newport, Wharton honed her design skills, co-authoring (with Ogden Codman, Jr.) her first major book, a surprisingly successful non-fiction work on design and architecture, The Decoration of Houses (1897).

The Mount “The supreme excellence is simplicity. Moderation, fitness, relevance – these are the qualities that give permanence to the work of the great architects…” In 1901, eager to escape Newport, Wharton bought 113-acres in Lenox, then designed and built The Mount, a home that would meet her needs as designer, gardener, hostess, and above all, writer. Every aspect of the estate—including its gardens, architecture, and interior design—evokes the spirit of its creator. In a letter to her lover, Morton Fullerton, Wharton revealed how much of herself she put into The Mount: “I am amazed at the success of my efforts. Decidedly, I’m a better landscape gardener than novelist, and this place, every line of which is my own work, far surpasses The House of Mirth… “ The Whartons would live at The Mount a short ten years. It was a transformational decade for Wharton, full of professional triumphs and emotional turmoil. Here she would write some of her greatest works, including The House of Mirth (1905) and Ethan Frome (1911).

All while her marriage disintegrated under the weight of Teddy Wharton’s mental instability. The Whartons sold The Mount in 1911, they divorced in 1913. Edith Wharton moved permanently to France, Teddy returned to his sister’s home in Lenox. World War I “Hasn’t it shaken all the foundations of reality for you?” In 1914, when World War I broke out, Edith Wharton was wealthy, famous, recently divorced, and living in her favorite city, Paris. Instead of withdrawing to the safety of England or returning to the United States, Wharton chose to stay and devote herself to creating a complex network of charitable and humanitarian organizations. Wharton established workrooms for unemployed seamstresses, convalescent homes for tuberculosis sufferers, hostels for refugees, and schools for children fleeing war-torn Belgium. As a writer, Wharton was intent on witnessing the realities of war and was one of a handful of journalists and writers allowed on the front lines. In 1916, Wharton received the French Legion of Honor for her war work.

EW in France WWI wtih soldiers and Walter Berry Later Life “I am an incorrigible life-lover & life-wonderer & adventurer.” At the end of the war, Wharton moved out of Paris to Pavillon Colombe, a suburban villa in the village of St.Brice-sous-Forêt. In 1921, her novel of old New York, The Age of Innocence, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In 1920 she acquired Château Ste.-Claire, a restored convent in the south of France. For the rest of her life, she divided her time between these two homes, devoted to her friends and dogs, writing prolifically, traveling, and gardening. She only returned to the United States twice after her move to France, the final time in 1923 to receive her Honorary Doctorate from Yale. She died on August 11, 1937, age 75 at Pavillon Colombe. She is buried, in the Cimetière des Gonards in Versailles, close to her good friend Walter Berry.

Additional Reading: Edith Wharton - Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence : Book Discussion • Writing Forum | WritersDigest.com Edith Wharton - Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton - Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence by Shaka » Mon May 14, 2007 1:31 pm As part of my plan to familiarize myself with American literature, I read Ethan Frome one night last week, picked because it was slim and time was short. Wow. A powerful and tragic, I was left after the last page with that "Phew, what a story." feeling. Inspired by Ms Wharton I then opened The Age of Innocence, picked because it was a Pulitzer prize winner by the same author. I'm not sure if it's me and my expectations were raised too high by the Ethan Frome, or if the story is simply not intrinsically powerful enough or if the telling is just not up to the standard set, but having struggled to the half way mark, I'm only just starting to get into the story.

The writing is good, the concept is powerful considering the age in which it is set, but I'm still waiting for it to reach out and grab me. Anyone else been there? Edith Wharton | Poetry Foundation Poetry Foundation Poet Details 1862–1937 A New York City aristocrat, Edith Wharton wrote poetry and fiction mainly about high society life. Her marriage to a wealthy businessman gave Wharton ample time to devote to writing such well-known novels as The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence, and Ethan Frome. By age 18 she had already published poems in magazines including the Atlantic Monthly. Discover this poet's context and related poetry, articles, and media. Poems by Edith Wharton SparkNotes: Ethan Frome: Context Ethan Frome Table of Contents Plot Overview Edith Wharton was born Edith Jones into an upper-class New York City family in 1862. As was typical for members of her class at that time, Edith had a distant relationship with her parents. She received a marriage proposal at a young age, but the wedding was ultimately thwarted by her prospective in-laws’ perception of the well-established Jones family’s unsurpassed snobbery.

In 1885, at the age of twenty-three, Edith married Edward Wharton, an older man whom the Jones family found to be of suitably lofty social rank. At an early stage the marriage turned somewhat sour, but Wharton remained with her husband for well over twenty years. She finally divorced him in 1913, although she never renounced his family name. The temptations of illicit passion constitute an undeniable focus of Wharton’s fiction, and many have pointed to Wharton’s unhappy marriage as an explanation. Indeed, Wharton’s very success as a writer, so unusual for a woman of her era, may be credited to the fact that her unhappy marriage forced her to devote her energies elsewhere. In fact, Wharton was advised by her doctor to take up the writing of fiction more seriously in order to relieve tension and stress. Eventually, Wharton turned to more tangible sources of relief as well, finding temporary solace in her surreptitious affair with the journalist Morton Fullerton, which coincided with the disintegration of her marriage. It was in the wake of this affair and her ensuing divorce that Wharton wrote many of her most successful and -enduring works.

Criticized as an immoral radical in her early years and as a moralizing conservative in her later years, Wharton has been difficult to pin down in her shadowy, shifting beliefs. She was undoubtedly concerned with the moral universe, but, in her fiction, conforming to social norms is constantly at odds with a rejection of conformity. She can perhaps best be described as a critic of moral recklessness, whether this recklessness causes one to lean toward conformity or toward rejection of conformity. Wharton wanted individuals to consider each moral decision on its own terms. After producing a great quantity of little-read short stories and novels, Wharton enjoyed her first true critical and popular success with the publication of The House of Mirth in 1905. In the early 1910s, she settled in Paris, where she remained for the rest of her days. One of her close associates there was the novelist Henry James, a fellow American expatriate of similarly intense and indecipherable moral sensibility. Ethan Frome, a curious and slender volume first published in 1911, is one of the few pieces of Wharton’s fiction that does not take place in an urban, upper-class setting.

The novel is all the more remarkable for its austere and penetrating impressions of rural working-class New England, especially given that its author was a woman of leisure, living in the comfort of her Paris salon. Wharton based the narrative of Ethan Frome on an accident that had occurred in Lenox, Massachusetts, where she had traveled extensively and had come into contact with one of the victims of the accident. Wharton found the notion of the tragic sledding crash to be irresistible as a potential extended metaphor for the wrongdoings of a secret love affair. In 1921, Wharton won the Pulitzer Prize for her highly esteemed novel The Age of Innocence. She continued to write novels throughout the 1920s, and, in 1934, she wrote her autobiography, A Backward Glance. In 1937, after nearly half a century of devotion to the art of fiction, Edith Wharton died in her villa near Paris at the age of seventy-five. More Help Edith Wharton, 75, Is Dead in France Edith Wharton, 75, Is Dead in France Special Cable to The New York Times PARIS, Aug.

12.--Edith Wharton, American novelist, died yesterday afternoon at her villa, Pavilion Colombes, near Saint Brice, Seine-et-Oise. She had been in fairly good health until she suffered an apoplectic stroke early yesterday morning and did not recover consciousness. She died at 5:30 P.M., but her death was not known in Paris. At her bedside was her friend, Mrs. Royal Tyler. Many of her friends will drive tomorrow to the villa, where the body is lying in state. Among them will be Edward Tuck, the philanthropist; Mrs. Walter Gay Wells and American and French officials. Funeral of Author Today Saint Brice Sous Foret, France, Aug. 12 (AP).--Edith Wharton will be buried in the Protestant cemetery at Versailles tomorrow. Representatives of the French War Veterans Association of Saint Brice will accompany the coffin, honoring her for her war work for France. She is survived by a niece, Mrs. Max Ferrard, wife of a noted historian. Published Thirty-eight Books Edith Wharton was the child as well as the author of the Age of Innocence.

In her seventy-five years of life she published thirty-eight books, including that great love story, "Ethan Frome." But her reputation rested mostly upon her achievement as the chronicler of Fifth Avenue, when the brownstone front hid wealth and dignity at its ease upon the antimacassar-covered plush chairs of the Brown Decade. As a child she lived within the inner circle of New York society that always thought of itself as spelled with a capital S. In her ancestry was a long succession of important names. The Schermerhorns, the Joneses, Pendletons, Stevenses, Ledyards, Rhinelanders and Gallatins, who had led the social life of New York before Mrs. Astor's horse was a symbol, before Commodore from Staten Island, or men with strange new names from the West had descended on the town. Her own father, although not overly rich, was, nevertheless, able to live, as she said, "a life of leisure and amiable hospitality." Besides Fifth Avenue, there was Newport. Beyond that was only Europe. When little Edith walked on the Avenue she passed nothing but brownstone and the cow pasture of the Misses Kennedy.

When she went on Bailey's Beach she shielded her fair skin from the sun with a black veil. When she went to Europe it was an escape from the crudities of American society--even that with a capital S. Innocence was the life of her childhood and it was the stuff of her better books. Much Abroad as Child Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones on Jan. 24, 1862. Her father was George Frederick Jones; her mother was the former Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander, and back of each were Colonial and Revolutionary ancestors. When she was 4 the family went abroad in pursuit of culture, health and economy, for her father's inherited funds had not increased during the Civil War that was just ended. Her early impressions were the international--New York and Newport, Rome, Paris and Madrid. Added to this was a vivid imagination, which found outlet in story telling even before she could read. In keeping with the sheltered life of the time, she was never sent to school, but was taught at home.

She began writing short stories in her early teens, but they were never about "real people." Little happened to the real people she knew; what did "happen" was generally not talked about. It was from this background that Mrs. Wharton was to inherit the belief from which she never departed, that "any one gifted with the least creative faculty knows the absurdity of such a charge" as that of "putting flesh-and-blood people into books." Later critics were to say that in this was her greatest lack. The young author wrote her first efforts on brown paper salvaged from parcels. She was not encouraged. "In the eyes of our provincial society," she was later to say, "authorship was still regarded as something between a black art and a form of manual labor." Each was equally despised in her social level. Her first acceptance was three poems which she sent to the editor with her calling card attached. Wrote a Novel at 11 In her autobiography Mrs. Wharton gives a picture of her literary beginnings along with a picture of her life. Her first novel, written when she as 11, began: "'Oh, how do you do, Mrs. Brown?' said Mrs. Tompkins.

'If only I had known you were going to call I should have tidied up the drawing room.'" The little girl showed it to her mother, whose icy comment was: "Drawing rooms are always tidy." Her first published book was a collaboration called "The Decoration of Homes." How many short stories she wrote before 1899 is not know. But she was encouraged in her writing by such friends as Egerton Winthrop and Walter Berry and somehow, while abroad, met Paul Bourget, the "chronicler of the bourgeoisie." Other mentors were William Brownell and Edward Burlingame, for many years editor of Scribner's Magazine. In her autobiography she writes: "I do not think I have ever forgotten one word of the counsels they gave me." To which a well- known critic added, "One well believes it." But it was Henry James who was her closest friend and most worth-while advocate. She was always his respectful disciple and, although in their many meetings he disguised the severity of his judgments with his usual elaborate verbal courtesies, he managed to convey the meaning of his criticism. He remained her close friend until his death. In 1899 Mrs.

Wharton--she had been married to Edward Wharton, a Boston banker, in 1885-- published her first book: "The Greater Inclination." In this may be found two of her best short stories, , "The Pelican" and "Souls Belated." This volume did not make her a wide reputation overnight. In fact, it was not until 1905 that she gained a large public, although in the interim there had appeared these books: "The Touchstone," "Crucial Instances," "The Valley of Decision" and "The Descent of Man and Other Stories," and her flare for travel books had asserted itself in two volumes on Italy, its villas and gardens. In 1905 she published her first of many best-sellers, "The House of Mirth." Most critics do not consider this her greatest book, but its popularity established her as a writer. This was in reality her first novel, although she had written long short stories in her other books.

Its title came from the biblical assertion, "The heart of fools is in the House of Mirth," and it was a happy title for projecting, as Wilbur Cross once put it, "a group of pleasure-loving New Yorkers, mostly as dull as they are immoral, and letting them play out their drama unmolested by others." Other novels came in rapid succession, but none attracted the attention in this country that was reserved for the book Elmer Davis once called "the last great American love story"--"Ethan Frome." Those which had gone between were "Madame de Treymes," in which certain French critics detected the influence of Flaubert and Maupassant; "The Fruit of the Tree," "The Hermit and the Wild Woman" and "Artemis to Actaeon." "Ethan Frome," which was most successfully dramatized two seasons ago, was written in 1911. In it she most successfully blended the psychological refinements she had learned from Henry James with her own inimitable ability to tell a story with a beginning and an end. One critic has said it is comparable only to the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne as a tragedy of New England life.

A novelette, it is considered a masterpiece of love and frustration, and is likely to stand, despite its comparative brevity, as her most accomplished work. Until 1906 Mrs. Wharton had divided her time between New York and her Summer home at Lenox, Mass. In that year she went to live in France, in Summer at Saint Brice and in Winter at Hyeres in Provence. Did Relief Work in War When the World War broke out she was in Paris and she plunged at once into relief work, opening a room for skilled women of the quarter where she lived who were thrown out of employment by the closing of workrooms. She also fed and housed 600 Belgian refugee orphans. In recognition France awarded her the Cross of the Legion of Honor and Belgium made her a Chevalier of the Order of Leopold. Meanwhile she wrote stories and articles on the war, including "Fighting France" and "The Marne." After the war she visited Africa with General Lyautey at the invitation of the French Government, and wrote as a result "In Morocco." "The Age of Innocence" was her next book and in terms of sales her most successful.

Here she used actually the materials she had hitherto used only for background--the social life of the New York into which she had been born and in which she was bread. Published serially here and abroad, it was widely read, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for 1920. It showed Mrs. Wharton at her best, understanding the cramped society of her youth, unaware of the world beyond it. Four years later she followed it with four novelettes published under the title of "Old New York," a constricted panorama of society in the Forties, Fifties, Sixties and Seventies respectively. Shortly after the publication of this volume she was made an officer of the Legion of Honor. Then she returned to America, to be awarded the Gold Medal of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the first woman to be so honored. In 1924 she also became the first woman to be awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by Yale University. In 1930 she was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Four years later she was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Since that time she had written other books, including "Twilight Sleep," a story of fashionable life in modern New York; "The Children," a study of the children of expatriated divorcees; "Hudson River Bracketed," a study of a modern writer, and "Certain People," a collection of short stories. But that was many years ago. That generation which knew her best for "The Age of Innocence" flocked to see "Ethan Frome" when it was adapted for the stage by Owen Davis and his son, Donald. Presented on Broadway with Pauline Lord, Ruth Gordon and Raymond Massey in the leading roles, the grim tragedy proved to be as good theatre as it had previously been a great book. "Ethan Frome" was not the only one of her books to have been translated into plays in recent years. "The Age of Innocence" helped add to the luster of Katharine Cornell eight years ago, and one of her shorter pieces became "The Old Maid" of the theatre, in which Judith Anderson and Helen Menken starred in 1935.

Question: Which American authoress wrote the novels 'Ethan Frome' and 'The Age of Innocence'?
Answer: Edith Wharton